PM POSHAN (Mid-Day Meal) Scheme

PM POSHAN (Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman) is a centrally sponsored scheme of the Government of India that guarantees one nutritious cooked meal each school day to children enrolled in government, government-aided and special training centre schools from the foundational stage (Bal Vatika/pre-primary) through Class VIII. It is the contemporary form of the National Programme of Mid-Day Meal in Schools, launched on 15 August 1995 as the National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education. The scheme acquired statutory force when it was brought under the National Food Security Act, 2013 (Section 5), which created a legal entitlement to a midday meal for children up to Class VIII. The Union Cabinet rechristened the programme PM POSHAN in September 2021 and approved its continuation for the five years from 2021–22 to 2025–26. Administrative responsibility rests with the Department of School Education and Literacy in the Ministry of Education, distinguishing it from the nutrition schemes housed under the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

Procedurally, the scheme functions through a tiered flow of grain and finance. The Food Corporation of India supplies foodgrains free of cost to states, with the Centre bearing 100 percent of the cost of grain and its transportation to schools. The nutritional norm fixes the meal at 450 calories and 12 grams of protein per child at the primary stage (Classes I–V), and 700 calories with 20 grams of protein at the upper-primary stage (Classes VI–VIII). Meals must be cooked on the school premises to the prescribed menu, which states design to incorporate local cereals, pulses and seasonal vegetables. State governments procure ingredients, engage cook-cum-helpers, and disburse a cooking cost per child per day that the Centre and states revise periodically and share according to the funding formula. A mandatory tasting of the meal by a teacher or member of the school management committee precedes distribution to children each day, a safeguard introduced after fatal poisoning incidents.

The cost-sharing architecture defines the scheme's federal character. Cooking costs, honoraria for cook-cum-helpers, transport assistance, kitchen-cum-store construction and management-monitoring-evaluation (MME) funds are split between the Union and the states. The ratio is 60:40 for most states and union territories with legislatures, 90:10 for the eight North-Eastern states and the Himalayan states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir, and 100 percent central funding for union territories without legislatures. PM POSHAN introduced several variants on the legacy programme: the formal extension of coverage to pre-primary Bal Vatika children, a Tithi Bhojan provision encouraging community contributions of special food on festivals and occasions, the promotion of School Nutrition Gardens to supply fresh produce, and a Direct Benefit Transfer mechanism crediting cooking costs and cook-cum-helper honoraria directly to bank accounts to curb leakage.

In operational terms the scheme is among the world's largest school-feeding programmes. Government figures place coverage at roughly 11.8 crore (118 million) children across approximately 11.2 lakh schools. State implementation varies markedly: Tamil Nadu, whose 1956 Madras scheme and 1982 universalisation under Chief Minister M. G. Ramachandran prefigured the national programme, runs an expanded model, while in August 2023 it added breakfast for primary students. Karnataka and Telangana have added eggs and milk to their menus; debates over egg inclusion in states such as Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have recurred on vegetarian grounds. The Centre piloted the Tithi Bhojan and nutrition-garden components in fiscal 2021–22, and the Ministry of Education's PM POSHAN portal tracks daily meal data, automatic monitoring system inputs and Aadhaar-linked beneficiary records.

PM POSHAN is frequently conflated with adjacent welfare instruments, and the distinctions are precise. The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme, delivered through anganwadi centres under the Ministry of Women and Child Development, covers children below six years, pregnant women and lactating mothers, whereas PM POSHAN begins at the pre-primary school stage and runs to Class VIII. POSHAN Abhiyaan, the national nutrition mission launched in 2018, is an umbrella convergence and behaviour-change programme targeting stunting and anaemia rather than a feeding entitlement. The Public Distribution System provides subsidised grain to households, not cooked meals to children at school. Recognising the school-feeding entitlement as a distinct, justiciable right traces to the Supreme Court's interim order of 28 November 2001 in People's Union for Civil Liberties v. Union of India (the right-to-food case), which directed every state to provide a cooked midday meal in primary schools.

Controversies cluster around food safety, social discrimination and fiscal adequacy. The Dharmasati Gandaman tragedy in Bihar on 16 July 2013, in which 23 children died from pesticide-contaminated food, prompted national food-safety guidelines and mandatory teacher tasting. Field studies and CAG audits have documented caste-based discrimination in seating and in the appointment of cooks, irregular cooking-cost releases, and inflated enrolment claims. Critics note that cooking-cost and cook honoraria revisions have lagged food inflation, eroding meal quality, and that cook-cum-helpers—predominantly women—remain honorarium workers without formal wages. The COVID-19 school closures from 2020 forced a shift to dry-ration distribution and DBT in lieu of hot meals, exposing the programme's dependence on physical school attendance.

For the practitioner, PM POSHAN is a touchstone case in the General Studies Paper II syllabus on welfare schemes, the federal division of responsibilities, and the linkage between nutrition, the right to education and the right to food. It illustrates how a discretionary 1995 programme was hardened into a statutory entitlement through judicial intervention and the National Food Security Act, how cost-sharing ratios encode the Centre–state bargain, and how convergence with anganwadi and health systems is attempted yet imperfect. Desk officers and policy analysts treat its delivery data, audit findings and nutritional norms as a working benchmark for evaluating India's broader human-capital and food-security commitments.